At the same time he acquired another printing company and, in the process, met an attorney who represented a startup personal computer company in Silicon Valley.
The attorney asked Billings to head up an effort to write the technical manuals for the PC startup.
“We’ve got this wonderful machine we’ve been shipping to people for 90 days now,” the attorney told him, “but there isn’t a shred of information to tell people how to use it or even how to get it out of the box and plug it into the wall.”
The prospect of entering a new and growing industry was too tempting to pass up, and he accepted. Running the nascent company’s technical publication department, Billings headed a team of 40 writers producing “jillions” of technical manuals and instruction booklets.
From publishing technical materials for the company, Billings went on to become its worldwide director of marketing, communications and public relations.
The firm enjoyed financial success during one year in the early ’80s, but good times did not last long. At one time it employed 3,000 people, but the next year the thriving operation had become one of the fastest shrinking companies in the area.
“IBM introduced its PC,” Billings says, “and in those days there was a lot of security in the three letters IBM and not much security in anyone else’s name.”
The company went under along with scores of other startups at that time.
Undaunted, Billings contacted a headhunter who got him in touch with another young computer company. He was sent to London to be general manager of the company’s British subsidiary while its initial public offering was being prepared in the United States. Initially the assignment was temporary—just six to eight weeks—but those few weeks turned into five years.
That company also eventually went bust, but Billings retained a number of consulting clients in Britain, including Insignia Solutions, another young technology firm, and eventually became managing director.
For a year-and-a-half, he commuted from London, where the firm’s development group was situated, to the marketing operation in Silicon Valley.
But by 1990, Billings had left Insignia Solutions and once again began consulting, once again moving from job to job, looking for new scenery.
He is writing a cookbook series and has authored a children’s book, The Cat Who Couldn’t Meow, which he says follows “the saga of our blue chartreux,” one of the seven foundling cats his wife has collected over the years. In conjunction with his writing, he has founded his own publishing imprint, Zzyzzyx Press.
Billings also keeps busy singing bass in his local choir and lending his reassuring drawl to voice-overs for documentaries. And he hasn’t forgotten his early pursuits—he now acts in and directs shows at the Alameda Repertory Theater, which he founded, and writes editorials for his local newspaper.
These activities bring the resume of Thomas Neal Billings up to date—a resume filled with occupations and pastimes. He recalls the complicated chronology of his past 50 years easily and cheerfully offers his daughter’s appraisal of a life filled with frenetic activity.
“One thing they can’t say, dad,” she told him, “is that you haven’t lived an interesting life.”
—Staff writer Stephen W. Stromberg can be reached at stromber@fas.harvard.edu.